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The elder Free-Ride offspring has been learning about forces ("pushes and pulls") in second grade science class. Meanwhile, at home both the sprogs found a new favorite film, The Way Things Go. It's about 30 minutes of nearly continuous Rube Goldberg machinery. There are a few visible cuts in…
Flame retardants aren’t just found in your furniture. It’s likely you also have detectable amounts of the chemical in your body too, which is pretty worrisome considering the growing amount of research connecting flame retardants to serious health risks. Researchers have linked to the chemicals to…
"Daddy? How do you make water?"
"You mean, what is it made of?"
"Yeah, what's water made of?"
"Hydrogen and oxygen."
"Oh. And what's hydrogen and oxygen?"
"They're chemical elements."
"So, when we drink water, we're drinking chemicals?"
"Well, yeah. In a sense, everything is chemicals. Water's a…
Madam Fathom has an excellent discussion of nicotine's effect on the brain and cognitive function. First off, I've rarely seen a clearer explanation of how neurons actually work:
Neurons are functionally integrated in expansive neural networks, with each neuron receiving up to thousands of inputs…
As terrible as the fire was, at least it gave me a pretty good class lesson. Rarely do I have the opportunity to make a discussion on water pollution hit quite so close to home.
Grady raises important questions, and I'm pleased to see some analysis of the watershed.
At Sustainability Southeast we also raise questions about how this incident reflects our investment in our health and the quality of our lives:
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/2006/10/06/health-of-apex-residents-…
Thanks for demonstrating interest in this!
i live in Apex, about a mile from the south edge of the evacuation zone. i got to stay home friday, because i couldn't get to work - all the roads were blocked between my house and my job.
as far as i've been able to tell from news reports, the fire (or, the stuff that burned) was either not as bad as initial reports, or the Town did a great job of getting people out before anyone got hurt - probably a little of both. there were few people actually hurt who weren't firefighters (and, that's an inherently dangerous job regardless of what's burning), and there doesn't seem to be any lingering pollutants in the air, or on the ground - at least not once you get away from the site of the fire. all good news, of course.
now, the news around here is of people who are suing the company because they were forced to evacuate their houses - one lawyer on the radio this AM described his client's complaint as the tragedy of missing the comforts of home "which they were accustomed to" for "nearly 48 hours".